YABookgate

[Piga Dgrifm]

I feel bad for the kids/teens looking for books now. So many YA books are just one-sided political diatribes now that only serve to push the message of the week. They're like those dumb after-school specials, only worse because of how long-winded they are. I don't care that your main character is a lesbian of color, stop repeating that fact and actually tell me a story.

 

[8777BB5]

I feel bad for the kids/teens looking for books now. So many YA books are just one-sided political diatribes now that only serve to push the message of the week. They're like those dumb after-school specials, only worse because of how long-winded they are. I don't care that your main character is a lesbian of color, stop repeating that fact and actually tell me a story.

One thing that always makes me smile is that most likely the kids that are into reading are probably skipping YA and going straight to Stephen King, Frank Herbert, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Jules Verne, Jane Austen and other authors that offer them fun, adventure, horror, swearing, sex and nudity without any condescending nonsense. When I was in school the only kids who read YA for the appropriate age group (11-1 were usually fat dorky dangerhairs who would scream bloody murder if you whistled around them. Most of the reading kids went from Harry Potter to adult books.

 

[I Love Beef]

This here is why I think YA gatekeeping is such a huge thing- it’s the last bastion of “youth culture” that they can even touch because otherwise they’re scared shitless of the fact that Gen Z is a lot more right leaning than millenials and boomers are.
I can’t even begin to count how many shitty dystopian YA there is out there that revolves around some army of teenagers overthrowing an incompetent totalitarian government after The Hunger Games started to get noticed by the masses. In fact, anytime I see anything resembling “Teh resistance” pop up in any book I just cringe.

That's my problem with this. The fuck is wrong with just giving teenagers Fahrenheit 451 or The Giver to read along if you want to make teenagers think for themselves? And in before calling me bitter, but not everyone who goes to school is exactly good or openminded either. You have to let those fuckers slip through the cracks and be the fodder to make examples of who to not be in society.

 

[Next Task]

I have family that's just about YA ready, and I feel fortunate that there's a great selection of YA for me to give them - it's just that none of it will have been released this decade. There's enough classics and stuff that can be gotten in to young that I know I, at least, can be a good influence.

I just hope their reading curriculum doesn't get woke. Because I know there's a big push for diversity and representation in the sort of books people read for school, and they're almost always the sorts of books that make kids resent reading.

 

[keyboredsm4shthe2nd]

Oh god. I'm not gay nor do I have kids, so no, I haven't read them. Why is it so hard to expose kids to the LGBT community without becoming a complete fucking degenerate about it? Ugh. I saw someone say on Twitter that kids need to be exposed to kink to normalize it for when they're adults. I kinda needed a shower after that.

That's prime pedo talk right there.
They learn it the way everyone does, watching a movie and asking why their peepee's hard. Whipping out the gimp suit and going into a diatribe about furries and bdsm is fucking child abuse.

 

[SnarkySperg]

But why, though? Being LGBT and having a fetish aren't the same thing, why are these idiots trying to promote that it is? You can say Johnny has two dads without having to deck them out in BDSM gear.

From what I've heard from the reason you see the BDSM gear is because that's how LGBTQP- people express themselves in public as well as it being a (childish way) of making homophobes uncomfortable. The funny thing is the people who do believe this are a vocal minority; Most of the gays and lesbians I've encountered facepalm when they see stuff like this marketed to children as well as Drag Queen Story Time.

This seems like it might be preventing progress. People who don't like gay people already think this and it's making it worse.

That's my problem with this. The fuck is wrong with just giving teenagers Fahrenheit 451 or The Giver to read along if you want to make teenagers think for themselves? And in before calling me bitter, but not everyone who goes to school is exactly good or openminded either. You have to let those fuckers slip through the cracks and be the fodder to make examples of who to not be in society.

At this point, I don't think a lot of people complaining about certain books don't actually want that. It's like how if you're a woman who is conservative, you're a misogynist. Freethought is only okay if you believe how they want you to.

What even happened to lead to this? Like, how did this desire for diverse books get so out of control? I can understand having more diverse characters. Tween/teen girls would love to see themselves in a book and that doesn't always happen. But how did it get to where it is?

 

[Piga Dgrifm]

This seems like it might be preventing progress. People who don't like gay people already think this and it's making it worse.

At this point, I don't think a lot of people complaining about certain books don't actually want that. It's like how if you're a woman who is conservative, you're a misogynist. Freethought is only okay if you believe how they want you to.

What even happened to lead to this? Like, how did this desire for diverse books get so out of control? I can understand having more diverse characters. Tween/teen girls would love to see themselves in a book and that doesn't always happen. But how did it get to where it is?

People saw the desire for diversity, and just stopped there. People want books with a lesbian character? Okay, put a lesbian in the book, no need to make her actually do anything because it's enough to just have her there. And people on GoodReads/Booktube eat that low-effort stuff right up. So, it's profitable and doesn't take any work.

Just look at I Wish You All The Best, the terrible enby book. It's poorly written, has no plot, has characters that lack personality... And was picked up by Scholastic, has glowing reviews, and has sold well. All because of the boxes it ticks. People see they can make money by just vomiting up some talking points, so of course that's what they're gonna do.

They've also set up a scenario where people aren't allowed to rate these books poorly. Negative reviews of a lot of them get bombarded with flames on GoodReads. If you don't like this shlock, it must be because you don't like whatever minority group is shown in it, it can't have anything to do with the quality. One star reviews on The Hate U Give typically begin with groveling about "Oh, but the MESSAGE is good!" and "I'm glad to see black representation, though!" when those things don't matter if the book itself is terrible.

 

[SnarkySperg]

People saw the desire for diversity, and just stopped there. People want books with a lesbian character? Okay, put a lesbian in the book, no need to make her actually do anything because it's enough to just have her there. And people on GoodReads/Booktube eat that low-effort stuff right up. So, it's profitable and doesn't take any work.

Just look at I Wish You All The Best, the terrible enby book. It's poorly written, has no plot, has characters that lack personality... And was picked up by Scholastic, has glowing reviews, and has sold well. All because of the boxes it ticks. People see they can make money by just vomiting up some talking points, so of course that's what they're gonna do.

They've also set up a scenario where people aren't allowed to rate these books poorly. Negative reviews of a lot of them get bombarded with flames on GoodReads. If you don't like this shlock, it must be because you don't like whatever minority group is shown in it, it can't have anything to do with the quality. One star reviews on The Hate U Give typically begin with groveling about "Oh, but the MESSAGE is good!" and "I'm glad to see black representation, though!" when those things don't matter if the book itself is terrible.

I wonder how these books would hold up without that. Pretty much every Amazon review I saw of I Wish You All the Best only talked about the representation. Very few mentions of the plot or anything, mostly just complimenting the representation. Is this why so many people think being non-'cishet' is a personality trait? If the only interest you have is sucking dick, you're just a whore, no matter what gender you are. And that's not really a good thing to be.

Somebody who (in my opinion) actually does LGBT characters well is Rick Riordan. I have my issues with his writing, but you've got Nico DiAngelo, who is honestly probably one of the better characters in the PJ universe, who happens to be gay. It's no big deal, not super important to the plot, but it's enough that it does what Riordan was hoping for--it gives gay kids someone to look up to. He said he hadn't seen a lot of representation of that and wanted to have a role model for them. And Nico has a personality and isn't just the token gay. Riordan also isn't trying to profit off of him, because come on, who's buying those books for NICO? Kinda ironic that a straight guy made a decent LGBT character when their own community can't. But hey, Nico was created before this craze happened.

I ask again--WHY do these people want representation so bad when this shit is what you'll end up with? Do enbies really want a book like I Wish You All the Best to be what everyone sees when they think of that?

 

[neverendingmidi]

One thing that always makes me smile is that most likely the kids that are into reading are probably skipping YA and going straight to Stephen King, Frank Herbert, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Jules Verne, Jane Austen and other authors that offer them fun, adventure, horror, swearing, sex and nudity without any condescending nonsense. When I was in school the only kids who read YA for the appropriate age group (11-1 were usually fat dorky dangerhairs who would scream bloody murder if you whistled around them. Most of the reading kids went from Harry Potter to adult books.

When I was a kid there was no YA section, so I skipped from Bruce Coville level readers to Anne McCaffrey, Alan Dean Foster, Mercedes Lackey, Robert Aspirin, etc. I'm not calling them geniuses of writing, actually McCaffrey has a low level anti group because it wasn't queer enough for todays standards with books written from 1970's to 90's, but it was a bit of a jump as a kid.

 

[A Pare A Teeth]

I haven’t seen (and I searched) this book in this thread yet

Beyond Magenta: Transgender Teens Speak Out
Amazon UK
Amazon description
A 2015 Stonewall Honor Book
A groundbreaking work of LGBT literature takes an honest look at the life, love, and struggles of transgender teens.

This book is available in UK (and I’m assuming American) libraries and is marketed to the YA audience and Binary had this to say about it
Transgender book describes oral sex by a 6 year-old
August 16, 2019
Beyond Magenta: Transgender Teens Speak Out is an explicit book which is being promoted in the youth sections of local libraries.
The book contains explicit language, violent acts, and graphic descriptions of oral sex carried out by children as young as 6 years-old.
Written mostly in first-person, transgender people share their journeys without mentioning the illegal nature of their activities or the consequences of certain behaviours.
“From six up, I used to kiss other guys in my neighbourhood, make out with them, and perform oral sex on them. I liked it. I used to love oral. And I touched their you-know-whats. We were really young but that’s what we did.”
The account goes on to describe paedophiles masturbating. The author does not qualify that the acts were harmful or illegal.

More info here CBS News - Books Under Attack

Beyond Magenta - book preview

I’ve not read all of it - just couldn’t because it seems most of these children had/have mental health issues and the author finds it all just wonderfully romantic.
For example the transwoman who gave blowjobs at 6 years old was in State care a lot and seems to be happy that violence is the answer when misgendered or if people recognise their birth sex - but this presents no real pause to the author.

For me it’s non fiction and deals with very adult themes, so if a library wants to hold it, it should be reclassified for adults and the dilution of acceptable boundaries and promoting sexuality to children is a worrying trend as already mentioned in this thread.

 

[Tasty Tatty]

...My god.

Ok, I guess there is a way for telling stories about sex through the mind of a young kid, but these people aren't precisely the best people to do so. NOt just for the lack of talent, but because they're insane.

 

[The Great Chandler]

I haven’t seen (and I searched) this book in this thread yet

Beyond Magenta: Transgender Teens Speak Out
Amazon UK
Amazon description
A 2015 Stonewall Honor Book
A groundbreaking work of LGBT literature takes an honest look at the life, love, and struggles of transgender teens.

This book is available in UK (and I’m assuming American) libraries and is marketed to the YA audience and Binary had this to say about it
Transgender book describes oral sex by a 6 year-old
August 16, 2019
Beyond Magenta: Transgender Teens Speak Out is an explicit book which is being promoted in the youth sections of local libraries.
The book contains explicit language, violent acts, and graphic descriptions of oral sex carried out by children as young as 6 years-old.
Written mostly in first-person, transgender people share their journeys without mentioning the illegal nature of their activities or the consequences of certain behaviours.
“From six up, I used to kiss other guys in my neighbourhood, make out with them, and perform oral sex on them. I liked it. I used to love oral. And I touched their you-know-whats. We were really young but that’s what we did.”
The account goes on to describe paedophiles masturbating. The author does not qualify that the acts were harmful or illegal.

More info here CBS News - Books Under Attack

Beyond Magenta - book preview

I’ve not read all of it - just couldn’t because it seems most of these children had/have mental health issues and the author finds it all just wonderfully romantic.
For example the transwoman who gave blowjobs at 6 years old was in State care a lot and seems to be happy that violence is the answer when misgendered or if people recognise their birth sex - but this presents no real pause to the author.

For me it’s non fiction and deals with very adult themes, so if a library wants to hold it, it should be reclassified for adults and the dilution of acceptable boundaries and promoting sexuality to children is a worrying trend as already mentioned in this thread.

Imagine this book as your school project. Imagine...

 

[Larry David's Opera Cape]

I could see a child that was young enough or had other stuff going on in their life honestly being somewhat traumatized by reading that bilge.

 

[Kari Kamiya]

It's one thing if they were speaking out about their traumas by raising awareness of the kind of shit that fucked them up and shaped them into who they are now (how did they have the strength to not kill themselves if they never got the therapy they desperately need?), but if it's being portrayed as a good thing that they were promiscuous at the age of six and you're a bigot for daring to point that out, then the UK (assuming it's UK-native, but it could also be from an American ghetto, I'm not clicking the link to check) is just begging to be destroyed. As is literature as we know it.

 

[A Pare A Teeth]

It's one thing if they were speaking out about their traumas by raising awareness of the kind of shit that fucked them up and shaped them into who they are now (how did they have the strength to not kill themselves if they never got the therapy they desperately need?), but if it's being portrayed as a good thing that they were promiscuous at the age of six and you're a bigot for daring to point that out, then the UK (assuming it's UK-native, but it could also be from an American ghetto, I'm not clicking the link to check) is just begging to be destroyed. As is literature as we know it.

The author is based in Manhattan, from the CBS news piece - “From her home office in Manhattan, Susan Kuklin has written about thirty books for children and young adults. Her most recent is called "Beyond Magenta: Transgender Teens Speak Out" (Candlewick Press), about young people who transitioned from one gender to another.”

And it’s here in Oz too, so yeah I find it troubling that it’s being pushed as progressive.

Sorry - I put the links like I did cos I thought it looked better but yeah could look dodgy. Here is the CBS link unhidden https://www.cbsnews.com/news/books-under-attack/

(I’m a newfag and guessing that Islamic rating is not a positive response. Apologies if I’ve mis-stepped with my first post on this thread.)

 

[Kari Kamiya]

The author is based in Manhattan, from the CBS news piece - “From her home office in Manhattan, Susan Kuklin has written about thirty books for children and young adults. Her most recent is called "Beyond Magenta: Transgender Teens Speak Out" (Candlewick Press), about young people who transitioned from one gender to another.”

And it’s here in Oz too, so yeah I find it troubling that it’s being pushed as progressive.

Lol New York. But now are the teenagers actual people whose accounts she's put into a book, or are they definitely fictional with some kernels of truth in them?

I bet those who are pushing it as progressive never took a closer look at what's going on, all they saw was the title and went "REPRESENTATION". But these are also the sick freaks pushing kinks onto children, so they might've seen mentions of six-year-olds giving blowjobs and thought "So true uwu".

(I’m a newfag and guessing that Islamic rating is not a positive response. Apologies if I’ve mis-stepped with my first post on this thread.)

Islamic ratings are negative, but it doesn't necessarily mean it's aimed at you. Your post was informative, but it was of the squicky haram kind.

So like I've said earlier here, you can publish anything you want, but shit like that book glossing over child abuse and potentially romanticizing it is making me wonder how much more rope there is to hang from. There's an appeal to banned books, so if these books get banned (whether they deserve it or not), that just makes people want to read them more. But if readers aren't going to be allowed to speak their minds without fear of backlash, then for one thing it goes against the very core concept of literature in sparking discussion and debate across ideologies. The other is that we now have run the risk of muddying that concept of literature with such degeneracy being pushed onto our children. There's a reason a lot of this generation doesn't like reading because they've been forced/pushed into reading books they're not interested in (and a lot of them are forgettable schlock, I only remember like maybe at most a quarter percentage total of books I've read in class from elementary school to college), and it's killed their natural desire for learning.

I wonder if there's a way to gauge/poll the number of new authors publishing books every few years or so, and from what age-group. I'm honestly not going to be shocked if the age-group is heavily skewed towards middle-aged people who are active published writers, and that we've hit an all-time low of newer, younger authors coming in. That could be one reason for all the forced diversity hires in the publishing world and the "need" for "muh diversity" in literature.

 

[The Great Chandler]

Has there ever been a modern YA novel that doesn't revolves around dumb high school/dystopia/political nonsense?

 

[A Pare A Teeth]

Lol New York. But now are the teenagers actual people whose accounts she's put into a book, or are they definitely fictional with some kernels of truth in them?

I bet those who are pushing it as progressive never took a closer look at what's going on, all they saw was the title and went "REPRESENTATION". But these are also the sick freaks pushing kinks onto children, so they might've seen mentions of six-year-olds giving blowjobs and thought "So true uwu".

Islamic ratings are negative, but it doesn't necessarily mean it's aimed at you. Your post was informative, but it was of the squicky haram kind.

So like I've said earlier here, you can publish anything you want, but shit like that book glossing over child abuse and potentially romanticizing it is making me wonder how much more rope there is to hang from. There's an appeal to banned books, so if these books get banned (whether they deserve it or not), that just makes people want to read them more. But if readers aren't going to be allowed to speak their minds without fear of backlash, then for one thing it goes against the very core concept of literature in sparking discussion and debate across ideologies. The other is that we now have run the risk of muddying that concept of literature with such degeneracy being pushed onto our children. There's a reason a lot of this generation doesn't like reading because they've been forced/pushed into reading books they're not interested in (and a lot of them are forgettable schlock, I only remember like maybe at most a quarter percentage total of books I've read in class from elementary school to college), and it's killed their natural desire for learning.

I wonder if there's a way to gauge/poll the number of new authors publishing books every few years or so, and from what age-group. I'm honestly not going to be shocked if the age-group is heavily skewed towards middle-aged people who are active published writers, and that we've hit an all-time low of newer, younger authors coming in. That could be one reason for all the forced diversity hires in the publishing world and the "need" for "muh diversity" in literature.

This book is marketed as non-fiction and I believe all the people used are real, and it’s all first person narrative.

I agree that this type of content when the ‘author does not qualify that the acts were harmful or illegal’ is going some way to what appears to be the push to ‘queer society’.

There has been some positive outcomes in UK libraries to get this book reclassified as adult non-fiction so it is removed from the YA section but as there’s nothing stopping YA borrowing from the adult section and yes like banning the book out right, this could prove to be a poisoned chalice.

Thanks also for the extra info.

 

[MW 002]

I haven’t seen (and I searched) this book in this thread yet

Beyond Magenta: Transgender Teens Speak Out
Amazon UK
Amazon description
A 2015 Stonewall Honor Book
A groundbreaking work of LGBT literature takes an honest look at the life, love, and struggles of transgender teens.

This book is available in UK (and I’m assuming American) libraries and is marketed to the YA audience and Binary had this to say about it
Transgender book describes oral sex by a 6 year-old
August 16, 2019
Beyond Magenta: Transgender Teens Speak Out is an explicit book which is being promoted in the youth sections of local libraries.
The book contains explicit language, violent acts, and graphic descriptions of oral sex carried out by children as young as 6 years-old.
Written mostly in first-person, transgender people share their journeys without mentioning the illegal nature of their activities or the consequences of certain behaviours.
“From six up, I used to kiss other guys in my neighbourhood, make out with them, and perform oral sex on them. I liked it. I used to love oral. And I touched their you-know-whats. We were really young but that’s what we did.”
The account goes on to describe paedophiles masturbating. The author does not qualify that the acts were harmful or illegal.

More info here CBS News - Books Under Attack

Beyond Magenta - book preview

I’ve not read all of it - just couldn’t because it seems most of these children had/have mental health issues and the author finds it all just wonderfully romantic.
For example the transwoman who gave blowjobs at 6 years old was in State care a lot and seems to be happy that violence is the answer when misgendered or if people recognise their birth sex - but this presents no real pause to the author.

For me it’s non fiction and deals with very adult themes, so if a library wants to hold it, it should be reclassified for adults and the dilution of acceptable boundaries and promoting sexuality to children is a worrying trend as already mentioned in this thread.

It’d be one thing to talk about giving blowjobs if you were trying to raise awareness about childhood sexual abuse. But this?

Pure degeneracy. This reads like a pedophile wrote it to justify sexually grooming children.

Luckily, the Amazon reviews aren’t very forgiving: https://www.amazon.ca/dp/B00HRC9HQC/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1

 

[︈︈︈]

It’d be one thing to talk about giving blowjobs if you were trying to raise awareness about childhood sexual abuse. But this?

Pure degeneracy. This reads like a pedophile wrote it to justify sexually grooming children.

Luckily, the Amazon reviews aren’t very forgiving: https://www.amazon.ca/dp/B00HRC9HQC/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1